The invention concerns a process for the bidirectional transmission of digital data through glass fibers, with which the data from the emitter in one station are transmitted to the receiver in a station at the other end of the glass fibers, whereby the bits from continuously transmitted data are compressed by a factor &gt;2 in bursts, in packages of equal quantities, without changing the transmission rate, where the bursts in one of the transmission directions are transmitted by the respective emitter through the glass fibers, during the pauses between the bursts in the other transmission direction, and with which the continuous flow of data is recovered from the bursts received by the respective receiver (DE-Book "Pulstechnik", Holzler & Holzwarth, volume II, published in 1984 by Springer, pages 402 to 412).
The bidirectional transmission of data through glass fibers permits to make better use of existing transmission paths. The transmission of signals by an emitter in a station that is connected to the glass fibers, to the receiver of the opposite station, is only possible without additional measures, when the emitter of the opposite station is not transmitting. The waiting time of the other station is measured as a function of the length of the transmission time of the sending station, during which the waiting station cannot transmit any data. The data flowing to the forcibly passive receiving station must be stored during the receiving operation, which represents a relatively large expense. Furthermore, important communications may be blocked for too long if one of the stations is not able to transmit for a long time. To this must be added that a (digitalized) telephone conversation via such a transmission path is nearly impossible.
This deficiency is corrected by the burst operation according to the DE-Book "Pulstechnik", described above. With this known process, both stations can transmit at the same time and also receive at the same time, if it is assured that the bursts do not collide in the two transmission directions. This is achieved by transmitting the bursts in one transmission direction during pauses between the bursts in the other transmission direction, created by compressing the bits of the continuous flow of data. The transmission rates of the flow of data to be transmitted are determined by pulse generators. To prevent displacements causing collisions between the two opposing flows of data, one of the stations in the known process operates as a "master" station, while the pulse is supplied to the other, the "slave" of the master station. The cost is correspondingly high.
The invention has the task of developing the process described earlier, so that the pulse supply to the two stations can be simplified, and the existing devices and components of the stations can still be utilized.